Karlendar
by Combination-NC
Summary: For the first twenty-four days of December, we shall open a slot of the Karlendar! ..What? This is a story of heartbreak in motion; about watching a friend suffer and suffering with them, without realising that you suffer, as well. This is about tower walls closing in, of the nature of escape, and coming to decisions when faced with injustices you can no longer turn a blind eye to.
1. S is about Survival

**Author's note:** Bad (by which I mean_ glorious_) puns aside, this is in _part_ a continuation to Karl's Alphabet but can be read as a stand-alone. It is following the advent calendar formula of one treat a day, only instead of chocolate, it will taste like heartache. It will go to dark inner places, so please be warned.

* * *

Doors are scarce on the levels of the tower Karl is allowed to frequent; a constant reminder of how mages are always watched and never quite trusted. Privacy is a luxury generally not wasted on them, seen as a danger more than anything else, and Karl tries to not think of the last time he saw an ordinary wooden front door that anyone could push open and with a normal lock, as memories can easily lead to _longing_ and all the dangers a feeling like that might bring.

Some days the key to survival is to not want anything at all, because when you want too much, you feel the restrictions placed upon you all the more.

For others the only way to survive is to fight against the same suffocating restraints with all the determined desperation of someone attempting to reach the surface of lake Calenhad before they run out of air and drown; Karl takes the former route, Anders the latter, and for all else they share this difference between them has Anders alight with frustrated impatience turned fury.

"Don't you even _care?_" he hisses, pacing between the storage room's door and a shelf stocked with glass jars filled with dried herbs; as much nature as most of them will touch in a lifetime. "Don't you ever get sick of all this? Locked up, ordered around, having to hide-" he waves his hand vaguely in the air, the gesture for _this_ or possibly _us_weak from despair temporarily overcome anger. He stops his pacing to look at him with the most haunted eyes Karl has ever seen. "This is not living", he whispers, so hopeless and for the moment drained of all fight.

"I know", Karl has to answer when he knows that lying to Anders about this would hurt him even further, and because there are things he cannot bring himself to lie about even to himself. He has felt the weight of the tower for longer than Anders has, but he still vaguely remembers what living outside it was like.

When he reaches out to touch Anders' cheek in a silent peace offering he closes his eyes and let him, and they stand like that in the gloom of the fragile sanctuary that the storage room can be for ten silent breaths before Anders snaps his eyes open to stare at him with pure challenge.

"Then do something", he demands with pretended calm before stepping away.

He slams the door on the way out with enough force to make the jars on the shelf next to it shake, and Karl looks at it numbly. Leaving so soon after him could be a danger, and he loathes that it is.

So instead of walking out the door he sinks down on the floor and rests his back against it, feeling like a drowning man unsure of whether he should kick with all strength left in him in an attempt to reach the surface, or let himself sink.

This is not living; this is surviving. And he does not know how to tell anyone that the two are not the same.


	2. R are the rules that haunt you

With the sound of the door slamming shut still ringing in his ears not so much due to the loudness as the meaning behind the action itself, Karl rubs tiny circular motions at his forehead just over the eyebrows in an attempt to force unwelcome thoughts away.

He is not surprised when it does not work and trades his circles for the resigned sound of a sigh as he tilts his head skywards to stare at the ceiling holding up the rest of the tower, so cruelly lying between him and the sunset. This is not the first time time they have argued with each other, if the exchange of words can even be called that, and it is not going to be the last. But their arguments have grown worse over the years, becoming ever more heated as Anders' frustration at the world grows, and Karl does what he can to keep his own frustration down. Frustration at the world at large would be another thing they could share, but when it comes to heated exchanges of words instead of kisses, the frustration that eats at Karl is directed at an Anders who will not or can not understand that laying low does not have to be about cowardice, not screaming his disapproval from the top of the library's bookshelves is not the same as being content with how things are, or that to not constantly fight against the rules at every turn is just as good as agreeing with them.

Of course many of the rules put in place chafe with all their restrictions, and following them does not bring Karl more peace than the small mercy of not having templars hound him more than necessary. And he does not follow them all, he has to think with a small smile despite it all; Anders knows this well. But when he gets into the kind of mood that causes him to rail against everything and everyone that does not handle things as he does the smaller acts of defiance are easily forgotten, and that is something that hurts more than Karl is willing to let him know.

He might have chosen the path of least resistance, but he has never said it is one he enjoys walking.


	3. E has to be enough, for now

"I don't know how to do it", Anders tells his back later, but not so much later that it is too late. Karl turns his head away from the rows of books he has been browsing to glance over his shoulder to half-meet his eyes, too Maker-cursed tired to face the look of such naked earnestness full on.

"How to apologise, or how to not do it in the first place?" He has to ask, and watches Anders momentarily retreat into himself, biting at his lower lip and fiddling with one of his blue sleeves, eyes downcast. Karl turns around, careful to not lean against the shelf itself, and waits.

"I… don't know." When amber eyes meet grey once more the look in the former is much too helpless and lost for their age. "I thought about it, and I just… I don't want you to be sad, or angry with me. But I don't want to be _alone_ with it, either."

It is not much of an apology, but it is enough for Karl because it is honest. Enough to abandon the books and step closer, enough to rest one hand against his shoulder and to let Anders trace his index finger along the seam of his sleeve. The touch tingles slightly, but not in the same way lightning called from the Fade does. And while Karl does not particularly wish to be alone with what is gnawing at him either, in some things it is better to be. Some dreams, some ideas, some ideals, are dangerous to voice and share. One apprentice lashing out in defiant tantrums might be brushed off as nothing more than a simple juvenile outburst; two people being caught sharing their defiance is conspiring. As he brings his forehead to Anders' to rest them together in a gesture that feels more intimate than a kiss, Karl's thoughts linger wearily on of how all dangers aside, he might one day come close to being comfortable here if only he could force himself to do what is necessary in order to become so. But there is a part of himself he would have to close off, and some days the thought of doing it almost feels as unnatural and wrong as it would to cut off his connection to the Fade.

Some things he hates about the Circle for what the templars and their Chantry denies them, and other things he hates for what mages have come to deny themselves.


	4. M should be moments to make memories of

The thought of what he might be denying himself lingers as he and Anders step away from each other, the library too open a place for such gestures of affection. There are mages who risk all of what little they have in the name of some senseless devotion, and while Karl certainly is not one of them there is still this _something_ present to tug at his insides when it comes to Anders; a something that makes it more difficult to breathe when he worries about where he is or what he will attempt next, and something that makes it seem worth the risk to sneak off to secluded areas with the same person over and over again. Some days he remembers to fear it; on others he has come to welcome it because it does at least not leave him feeling heart-wrenchingly numb.

Were he a more careful mage, he would not let himself have those moments or let himself become close enough to another to feel they were moments to share. But he is not as careful a mage as he could be, and at this moment his gnawing weariness is directed at the desperate pressure of trying to be as careful as he should be. To do something reckless, even if only slightly, is to be rid of some of that weight for a while, and the rush of following Anders' down to the storage rooms and kissing him before their door is even fully closed behind them is enough to make him forget the things he wish he did not have to carry.

For moments upon moments there is nothing in life but a worn stone floor covered in robes turned inside out, of pale legs wrapped around him, one freckled hand in his hair and another gifting shallow crescents to his back. The floor is anything but comfortable but Anders is warm and sounds like life should and in the breaths when they sweat together that is all that matters.

Afterwards, before any numbness has a chance to creep up on him, he tucks a strand of red gold behind Anders' ear and gestures towards the shelf where fragile glass jars shook the day before.

"What would you have me do?" Karl wonders not for the first time, but the first one he can remember to be out loud.

"I don't know", Anders whispers so soon it makes Karl believe it is a question he has often asked himself and is despairing over not knowing the answer to.

Sometimes, something means anything.


	5. T is the thoughts you cannot leave alone

A too large part of him wishes he could care about nothing else than to curl up around Anders and breathe hot air at the nape of his neck; when Anders does it to him, it reminds Karl of summer winds over fell fields. He is likely never to breathe those in again, but pretending to be able to breathe them out makes him smile at the memories and his own nostalgic self-indulgence. Some nights when he close his eyes images of Anderfels' plains come alive after a night of rain are there to greet him at the back of his eyelids. Those that have the fortune of never having seen the inside of the Circle Tower, so desolate-feeling a place despite its abundance of inhabitants might call those lands barren, but Karl remember there being life. Many different kinds of greenery, all rough and low to the ground; especially a peculiar plant that looked much like a miniature tree with small grain-tinted flowers. His sisters used to make circlets of them to wear or weaved wicker from their roots, and his mother knew how to use the flowers to dye cloth in brilliant hues. Sometimes when a robe that could have been dyed from such flowers flickers across the edge of his field of vision his heart aches, but the ache gets duller and duller as his life-years as property of the Tower keeps piling up. One far-off day the memories might be too fragile to be called memories any longer and will have long ceased to hurt, and while a more sensible mage might look forward to that day, as it is now the thought only fills him with a strange sorrow. And like Anders, he sometimes wishes to run from it all, only…

He curls up around him despite there not being enough time to stay like this, and pretends to breath summer against the nape of his lightly freckled neck.

If he ran from Anders he might not feel like he does now. If he stopped seeking out the one who constantly reminds him to remember what he should have long left behind simply by existing, he could forget easier and in the long run he might be better off for it.

But sometimes, he wonders if Anders is in part running to run from himself, and not only templars and Chantry supervision. And he cares for him far, far too much to ever want to risk seeing what would happen if he did the same.


	6. H is the help you might need as well

If the opportunity to break free ever presented itself, Karl wonders if he would dare take it. He knows he could not go about it like Anders, who pounces on every last chance to get away and then makes the rest up as he goes along; he would need to plan ahead, and to be completely honest the thought of planning an escape _frightens_ him because there is so much more to it than aimless running. If he could even get away from the tower, where would he go next? And when he got there, what would he do to get by? The tower has made him a scholar, and as much as it suits him to be one he has no idea how needed they are outside. While he could learn how to do something new it would not be without attracting attention, because what manner of adult does not even know how to handle an axe to chop wood with? When he was forced to leave his home he had been far too young to use one, and the same is true for most mages.

Anders, though, would know, and in a way it is a funny thought that there are areas where Anders' knowledge of things so vastly exceeds his own. He has gotten so used to it being the other way around during the years they have spent together, Anders' late arrival to the tower leaving him with years of knowledge to catch up to. Karl started helping him out early on, being from the same far-off land and thus understanding said land's words because helping someone in need of such harmless help felt natural. No one had to order him to for the Circle's convenience; they would sooner have had to order him not to. At the time he thought it was the teaching which came naturally to him; later, when calming down a homesick and despairing Anders, it seemed as if it was the helping part itself.

Now when the days feel so much darker despite the tower not letting in any less light than it did years ago he is plagued by thoughts of _what if_. What if he did not wish to help someone out of the goodness of his heart, but only to feel meaningful? He did gain something from it, after all; suddenly having a place, and making a difference to someone for the first time.

On lighter days he can think of it as for what it most likely is; friends helping each other in their own way. But on the days when he catches himself staring at the windows of the dining hall and thinking of what an escape actually entails, he _doubts,_ and is unsure of what it is he truly wants to escape.

If he could run from anything, he might run from the person he has become.


End file.
